ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 368

Giant radio telescope scaled back to contain costs

By Sarah Wild

Designs for the world’s largest radio telescope have been scaled back to save money — a decision that astronomers say could affect its ability to peer deep into the Universe’s past.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a telescope 50 times more sensitive than current instruments, is expected to cost billions of dollars. Its final design calls for around 2,000 radio dishes in Africa, together with up to one million antennas in Australia, that will have a total light-collecting area of roughly 1 square kilometre — hence the project’s name.

But the first phase of construction, called SKA1, is a more modest affair. Already slimmed down from a larger design proposed in 2013, it now comprises 194 dishes in South Africa and around 130,000 antennas in Australia. In March, the SKA’s board said that the project would have to find further cuts of around 20% so that it could be built within a €674 million (US$785 million) cap imposed by the project’s ten funders — Australia, Canada, China, India, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. And at a meeting in the Netherlands on 18–19 July the board decided to make the savings by, among other measures, scaling back SKA1’s computing power and crowding its antennas and radio dishes closer together.

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Wandering in the Void, Billions of Rogue Planets without a Home

By Lee Billings

Not all planets have a home. For decades, astronomers and science fiction authors alike have speculated about orphaned orbs cast adrift from their home stars, endlessly wandering the boundless reaches of interstellar space. Most theorists hold that such ejections should be quite common during the chaotic tumult of a planetary system’s early days, when closely-packed worlds whirling around a star can scatter off each other like billiard balls in a break shot. Studying the properties of these far-flung planetary nomads—their numbers, masses and trajectories—could allow scientists to reconstruct these bodies’ murky origins and peer into a crucial formative stage of planetary systems that is otherwise largely hidden to us.

Hard evidence for this population of planetary nomads has proved elusive—floating cold and lightless in the void, these dark worlds cannot be directly observed by any conceivable telescope. Very rarely, however, one might pass in front of a far-distant background star, creating a detectable blip of light as the planet’s gravitational field acts as a magnifying lens. The duration and strength of such a “gravitational microlensing” event could reveal not only a rogue planet’s existence but also its mass, as bigger worlds tend to create longer, stronger amplifications of a background star’s light. A typical free-floating Jupiter-mass planet, for instance, is estimated to create an amplification lasting one to several days. A smaller, Earth-sized object might only amplify a star for a few hours.

It takes intensive calculations and a complicated series of assumptions to extract a rogue planet’s basic details from the deceptively simple brightening of faraway stars. But experts broadly agree that it can be done—so a handful of telescopic surveys around the world now monitor hundreds of millions of suns night after night to seek these objects, gradually taking a bulk census of the Milky Way’s loneliest worlds from the telltale twinkles of chance cosmic alignments.

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Resolution on Richard Dawkins- Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain

Resolution on Richard Dawkins

The International Conference on Free Expression and Conscience in London, the largest gathering of ex-Muslims in history, is concerned that Richard Dawkins, an invited speaker at the conference, has been de-platformed by the radio station KPFA in Berkeley, California because of his alleged “hurtful” comments on Islam.

Professor Dawkins is a well known critic of all religions, whose long-standing attacks on Christianity have never resulted in anything approaching de-platforming. Indeed he has aired his views on KPFA itself. Belatedly, KPFA seems to have noticed that Islam is not exempt from his criticism. They have applied a hypocritical double standard in cancelling his appearance in Berkeley, and have disappointed the large numbers of people who had bought tickets to hear him.

Given that most of the speakers and delegates at our conference are Islam’s apostates, many from countries where the legal penalty for apostasy is death, we find it necessary to remind KPFA that criticism of Islam is no different from criticism of Christianity or Judaism. Also, criticism of Islamism is no different from criticism of the Christian-Right, Jewish-Right or Hindu-Right. Criticism of religious ideas as well as violent religious political movements isn’t bigotry but integral to free conscience and expression and vital for human progress.

We call on those – like KPFA – who should be our natural allies and ‘progressives’ whose freedoms and rights are largely the result of the fight against the church and Christianity not to betray or deny the same right to Islam’s critics, non believers, and dissenters.

Progressive politics means fighting on many fronts, including against bigotry, xenophobia, the far-Right, which includes Islamism, and for freedom of conscience and expression.

Read the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain’s full statement.

A Letter from Michael Shermer to KPFA

To: Quincy McCoy, KPFA General Manager, and Laura Prives, KPFA Program Director

Dear Quincy and Laura,

I am writing to protest the cancellation of the Richard Dawkins event. According to your notification statement “KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech” or “abusive speech” that Dawkins allegedly expressed in his twitter account and other sources. I have known Richard for a quarter century and follow his twitter feed and other public commentary sources, and I have never once seen him express hurtful or abusive speech against any person or any group of people. Richard is critical of wrong, bad, and dangerous ideas, not people, and although he has been critical of religion, as a great many scientists are (myself included), it is the religion’s ideas, not followers, of which we are skeptical.

As well, you appear to be hypocritical in this recent denunciation of Dawkins inasmuch as you have hosted him many times in the past, as a quick search of your website shows. In 2012, for example, Richard talked about “the virus of faith”, particularly Christianity. In 2013 in spoke about his book The Greatest Show on Earth, which was highly critical of creationism.

This is consistent with my own appearances on KPFA when I’m in Berkeley on my book tours. Your hosts—and by extension your station—never once objected to my critical comments on creationism in particular or Christianity in general, which I expressed many times.

So it would seem that KPFA has bought into the hypocritical stance held by many on the left that it is acceptable to criticize Christianity and Judaism but not Islam, even if it is just the ideas of these religions one is critiquing. Why?

Sincerely,

Michael Shermer

Skeptic Magazine

Scientific American

P.O. Box 338

Altadena, CA 91001

Final New Moon Sunday Starts the Countdown to the Great American Eclipse

By Joe Rao

It seems that everyone is eagerly awaiting the shady drama that will be enacted in the skies over North America on Aug. 21. It is a play whose script was written eons ago: On that third Monday in August, the celestial wanderings of the sun, Earth and moon will cause our natural satellite to pass directly in front of the sun, resulting in a total eclipse on Aug. 21.

The narrow band of totality, averaging some 70 miles (113 kilometers) wide and stretching about 2,500 miles (4,023 km) from the Pacific coast of Oregon to the Atlantic coast of South Carolina, will provide a spectacle that has not been seen from any part of the contiguous United States in nearly 40 years.

To say that this has been an eagerly awaited astronomical event is an understatement.

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Kentucky Officials Have Ended the $18 Million Tax Rebate Deal With Ark Encounter

By Hemant Mehta

This is a big deal. And you can read more of the back story here.

Quick summary: The Creationists behind Ark Encounter initially said they were building a for-profit attraction in order to get a lot of perks, including a tourism-related tax rebate from the state of Kentucky worth more than $18 million over ten years. But after the city of Williamstown said they would add a 50-cent surcharge to all tickets to pay for a safety fee, Ken Ham‘s team sold Ark Encounter to their own non-profit, Crosswater Canyon, because religious ministries are exempt from that kind of tax.

Earlier today, the Freedom From Religion Foundation announced that they had sent a letter to the Kentucky Tourism, Arts, and Heritage Cabinet notifying them that, because of the sale and new non-profit status, Ark Encounter is violating the terms of the tax rebate deal.

Guess what? They didn’t need to do that. Because three days ago, a lawyer for the Kentucky Tourism, Arts, and Heritage Cabinet sent a letter to the lawyer for Ark Encounter saying the exact same thing.

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An Experiment in Zurich Brings Us Nearer to a Black Hole’s Mysteries

By Kenneth Chang

The equations that describe the universe at the smallest and largest scales — how the tiniest elementary particles dance, how the space-time of the cosmos bends — predicted a slight incongruity, a tiny unbalancing in the numbers of certain particles under certain circumstances.

But physicists have yet to observe this phenomenon, with the unwieldy name of mixed axial-gravitational anomaly, and confirm the prediction. The imbalance is negligible except when the warping of space-time is extreme — like next to a black hole or the moment after the Big Bang.

It turns out there was somewhere else to look, and it was much closer. An international team of scientists discovered this anomaly in a tabletop apparatus in Zurich examining the properties of a tiny metallic ribbon.

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A Federal Appeals Court Just Shot Down Government Prayer on Steroids in North Carolina

By Heather L. Weaver

In Rowan County, North Carolina, the county board of commissioners was intent on taking government prayer to a whole new level. Every board meeting opened with a prayer. But it wasn’t just government prayer. It was government prayer on steroids.

The prayers were delivered by commissioners themselves. No one else was allowed to give the prayer. Over the years, the prayers referred to only one faith — Christianity — and were proselytizing. Multiple prayers, for example, described Christianity as “the one and only way to salvation.” In others, commissioners apologized for the community’s sins and failure to follow Jesus Christ, suggested that Christianity is a superior faith, and expressed a desire for meeting attendees to accept Christ.

Before every prayer began, a commissioner instructed audience members to stand and directed those assembled to join in the prayer. When some residents objected to the prayers, several commissioners loudly recommitted to the practice. One even announced he would go to jail before ending the prayers while another declared that he was being persecuted.

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You win some, you lose some! (KPFA Cancellation)

Richard got a lovely piece of news this week:

 

And then this came in (apparently you can critiicise religion all you want – except one religion!)

Subject: Notification for Richard Dawkins: Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist
 Dear Richard Dawkins event ticket buyers,


We regret to inform you that KPFA has canceled our event with Richard Dawkins. We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people. KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech. While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech. We apologize for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins views much earlier. We also apologize to all those inconvenienced by this cancellation. Your ticket purchases will automatically be refunded by Brown Paper Tickets.


Sincerely,

KPFA Radio 94.1 FM

Statement from the Center for Inquiry: Cancellation of Richard Dawkins Berkeley Event Baseless and Unconscionable 

The Center for Inquiry was stunned and deeply dismayed by the cancellation of an event with Prof. Richard Dawkins by the radio station KPFA in Berkeley, California. The station alleged without evidence that the world renowned evolutionary biologist had engaged in “abusive speech,” against Islam, a justification that CFI considers absurd. Prof. Dawkins is a renowned, responsible, and thoughtful critic of all religions, who KPFA had previously hosted in 2015, apparently undisturbed by Prof. Dawkins’ criticism of some of the tenets and ideas of Islam, Christianity, and other faiths.

“Richard Dawkins is one of the greatest intellects of our time, with a wealth of wisdom and insight that he looked forward to sharing with his Berkeley audience,” said Robyn Blumner, President and CEO of the Center for Inquiry. “For KPFA to suddenly break its commitment to Richard and the hundreds of people who were so looking forward to seeing and hearing him is unconscionable, and the baseless accusation that Richard has engaged in ‘abusive speech’ is a betrayal of the values KPFA has, until now, been known for.”

Prof. Dawkins—whose landmark book The Selfish Gene was just voted the most influential science book of all time in a poll by the Royal Society—was scheduled to speak on August 9 about his newest book, Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist, which KPFA itself called “excellent.” In a message to ticket holders, KPFA claimed the event had been booked when “we didn’t know [Dawkins] had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people.” They added, “While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech.”

“The idea that I have engaged in abusive speech against Islam is preposterous, which even the most rudimentary fact-checking by KPFA would have made clear,” said Prof. Dawkins. “I have indeed strongly condemned the misogyny, homophobia, and violence of Islamism, of which Muslims — particularly Muslim women — are the prime victims. I make no apologies for denouncing those oppressive cruelties, and I will continue to do so.”

Last year, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science merged with the Center for Inquiry, and Prof. Dawkins joined the CFI board of directors.

“In its forty-one-year history, the Center for Inquiry has fought proudly for human and civil rights, and Richard Dawkins is an invaluable ally for our cause.” said Blumner. “We (including Richard Dawkins himself) strongly opposed President Trump’s misguided and discriminatory Muslim ban. We have been at the forefront of the major civil justice causes of our time, and we have devoted ourselves to countering the outmoded, dogmatic prejudices and misinformation aimed at marginalized groups. It is one of the many reasons why we were proud to be the sole secularist organization invited to join the Know Your Neighbor interfaith coalition, launched in 2015 at the White House.”

“We understand the difference between a people and the beliefs they may hold,” said Blumner, “All of us must be free to debate and criticize Ideas, and harmful ideas must be exposed. It is incredibly disappointing that KPFA does not understand this.”

Letter from Jerry Coyne

Dear KPFA,

Your cancellation of Dawkins’s talk was unconscionable. His speech has not been abusive towards Islam, but has involved criticism of religious dogma–and of all faiths. That is free speech, not “abusive” speech. All meaningful speech hurts some people’s feelings, but in this case there was no “abuse.” Can you point to any?

Your craven behavior towards this talk, and caving in to those who want to prevent others from hearing it, is unconscionable. How dare a radio station commit such a blatant violation of the First Amendment?

Shame on you.

Jerry Coyne

You can read Jerry’s thoughts in full on his blog.

Shame on these Know-nothing Pathetic Fraidy-cat, um, folks!

Richard Dawkins Event CANCELED https://t.co/STT0qJQnD6

— Daniel Dennett (@danieldennett) July 21, 2017

Letter from Steven Pinker

Dear KPFA,

As a longtime listener to KPFA, and a frequent guest on its programs, I was shocked to learn that your organization canceled a public event with Richard Dawkins because of alleged “abusive speech.” The decision is intolerant, ill-reasoned, and ignorant. Dawkins is one of the great thinkers of the 20th and 21st century. He has criticized doctrines of Islam, together with doctrines of other religions, but criticism is not “abuse.” As the activist Sarah Haider has pointed out, “Religions are just ideas and don’t have rights.” To criticize tenets of Islam is no more abusive than to criticize tenets of neoliberalism or the Republican Party platform.

People may get offended and hurt by honest criticism, but that cannot possibly be a justification for censoring the critic, or KPFA would be shut down because of all the people it has hurt and offended over the decades.

In making this decision you have handed a precious gift to the political right, who can say that left-leaning media outlets enforce mindless conformity to narrow dogma, and are no longer capable of thinking through basic intellectual distinctions.

I hope you will reconsider this decision and acknowledge the value of viewpoint diversity, free speech, and careful analysis of morally and politically fraught issues.

Sincerely,

Steven Pinker

Johnstone Family Professor

Dept. of Psychology

Harvard University

Prof. Ramachandran denounces the cancellation of KPFA event.

“I strongly denounce the cancellation of this event. Dawkins is the most intellectually honest and courageous person i know. Whether or not you agree with all his views, you cannot question his integrity. He is, perhaps, the supreme rationalist of our age – reminds me of my boyhood heroes, PeterMedawar and Bertrand Russell .” –VS Ramachandran UCSD

Friendly Atheist responds to KPFA: “The reasons are worse than you think”

A few days ago, “progressive” radio station KPFA in Berkeley (California) canceled a previously scheduled event with Richard Dawkins because of his supposed “hurtful” and “abusive” speech toward Islam. Dawkins was going to talk about his new book called Science in the Soul, but once the radio station heard about his history, they pulled the plug on the reading.

The station was vague at the time about what exactly they were referring to, but now we know which comments by Dawkins led them to cancel the event.

According to the station’s own reporting of the controversy, which I can’t embed here, Dawkins (whom one critic says is an “Islamophobe”) once said on Twitter that “Islam is the greatest force for evil in the world today.”

Read more

Open Letter from Richard Dawkins

Dear KPFA,

I used to love your station when I lived in Berkeley for two years, shortly after that beloved place had become the iconic home of free speech. I listened to KPFA almost every day during those years, and I regularly contributed to your fundraising drives, grateful for your objective reporting and humane commentary while I participated in the People’s Park and Vietnam war demonstrations. It was therefore a matter of personal sorrow to me to receive this morning your truly astonishing “justification” for de-platforming me. 

My memory of KPFA is that you were unusually scrupulous about fact-checking. I especially admired your habit of always quoting sources. You conspicuously did not quote a source when accusing me of “abusive speech”. Why didn’t you check your facts – or at least have the common courtesy to alert me – before summarily cancelling my event? If you had consulted me, or if you had done even rudimentary fact-checking, you would have concluded that I have never used abusive speech against Islam. I have called IslamISM “vile” but surely you, of all people, understand that Islamism is not the same as Islam. I have criticised the ridiculous pseudoscientific claims made by Islamic apologists (“the sun sets in a marsh” etc), and the opposition of Islamic “ scholars” to evolution and other scientific truths. I have criticised the appalling misogyny and homophobia of Islam, I have criticised the murdering of apostates for no crime other than their disbelief. Far from attacking Muslims, I understand – as perhaps you do not – that Muslims themselves are the prime victims of the oppressive cruelties of Islamism, especially Muslim women.

I am known as a frequent critic of Christianity and have never been de-platformed for that. Why do you give Islam a free pass? Why is it fine to criticise Christianity but not Islam?

You say I use “abusive speech” about Islam. I would seriously – I mean it – like to hear what examples of my “abusive speech” you had in mind. When you fail to discover any, I presume you will issue a public apology, which I will of course accept in a spirit of gratitude for what KPFA once was. And could become again.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Dawkins

Letter to KPFA

Dear KPFA,

I used to love your station when I lived in Berkeley for two years, shortly after that beloved place had become the iconic home of free speech. I listened to KPFA almost every day during those years, and I regularly contributed to your fundraising drives, grateful for your objective reporting and humane commentary while I participated in the People’s Park and Vietnam war demonstrations. It was therefore a matter of personal sorrow to me to receive this morning your truly astonishing “justification” for de-platforming me.

Subject: Notification for Richard Dawkins: Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist

Dear Richard Dawkins event ticket buyers,

We regret to inform you that KPFA has canceled our event with Richard Dawkins. We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people. KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech. While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech. We apologize for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins views much earlier.  We also apologize to all those inconvenienced by this cancellation. Your ticket purchases will automatically be refunded by Brown Paper Tickets.

Sincerely,

KPFA Radio 94.1 FM

 

My memory of KPFA is that you were unusually scrupulous about fact-checking. I especially admired your habit of always quoting sources. You conspicuously did not quote a source when accusing me of “abusive speech”. Why didn’t you check your facts – or at least have the common courtesy to alert me – before summarily cancelling my event? If you had consulted me, or if you had done even rudimentary fact-checking, you would have concluded that I have never used abusive speech against Islam. I have called IslamISM “vile” but surely you, of all people, understand that Islamism is not the same as Islam. I have criticised the ridiculous pseudoscientific claims made by Islamic apologists (“the sun sets in a marsh” etc), and the opposition of Islamic “ scholars” to evolution and other scientific truths. I have criticised the appalling misogyny and homophobia of Islam, I have criticised the murdering of apostates for no crime other than their disbelief. Far from attacking Muslims, I understand – as perhaps you do not – that Muslims themselves are the prime victims of the oppressive cruelties of Islamism, especially Muslim women.

I am known as a frequent critic of Christianity and have never been de-platformed for that. Why do you give Islam a free pass? Why is it fine to criticise Christianity but not Islam?

You say I use “abusive speech” about Islam. I would seriously – I mean it – like to hear what examples of my “abusive speech” you had in mind. When you fail to discover any, I presume you will issue a public apology, which I will of course accept in a spirit of gratitude for what KPFA once was. And could become again.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Dawkins